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Matt and Sean get pumped talking about 3D Printing, Heat Pumps, and your comments.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, Are Heat Pumps a Scam? https://youtu.be/K2c6Rucbi84?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
Matt and Sean get pumped talking about 3D Printing, Heat Pumps, and your comments.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, Are Heat Pumps a Scam? https://youtu.be/K2c6Rucbi84?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
Follow us on X: @stilltbdfm @byseanferrell @mattferrell or @undecidedmf
Undecided with Matt Ferrell: https://www.youtube.com/undecidedmf
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Creators and Guests
What is Still To Be Determined?
Join Matt Ferrell from the YouTube Channel, Undecided, and his brother Sean Ferrell as they discuss electric vehicles, renewable energy, smart technologies, and how they impact our lives. Still TBD continues the conversation from the Undecided YouTube channel.
Sean Ferrell: Today on Still To Be Determined, we're going to talk about pump, pump, pumping it up. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Still To Be Determined. This is the podcast that follows up on Undecided with Matt Ferrell. I am not Matt Ferrell. I'm Sean Ferrell. As always, with me is Matt Ferrell to talk about the most recent episode, which in this case is heat pumps. But before we get into that, we always like to take a look at what you've had to say about our previous episodes. But before we get into that, Matt, how are you doing today?
Matt Ferrell: Your intro caught me off guard. Well done, Sean.
Sean Ferrell: It's always my unspoken goal with every intro. Can I get Matt to laugh in what is effectively off camera? Because I'm sure at this stage of the video it's my face, so I get to see Matt's reaction while the rest of you don't. And they probably even edit out the laughter. If you are hearing nothing but my voice, trust me, there is laughter. There is laughter. As I said. We're going to get into Matt's newest one about heat pumps. Basically an analysis of heat pumps from the Are they a scam angle. Spoiler? They're not, no. But we'll deal with that later. For right now, we're just going to take a look at what you had to say about our latest episode, which is 293 The Sodium Battery Fade. The discussion that we had about sodium batteries having been viewed a few years ago as a great cheap alternative to lithium batteries. And then the price of lithium dropped and suddenly price parity meant sodium was starting to look like a lesser option. But we had a bit of a conversation about how well every dog might have its day, so these batteries might still find perfectly fine use cases. And your comments followed a. In some cases, a response to the earlier discussion that we had that week about. Well, there was a conversation around water and a water bottle and AI in the water bottle and the AI changing the water by adding hydrogen atom. And somebody last week came in and said, that makes deuterium. And we were like, ooh. And then Darth Sirius showed up this week and said, no, that doesn't make deuterium, it makes tritium. So Darth Sirius shows up and just says adding a hydrogen atom to water would be H3O and it's called hydronium. Chemistry is fun. I'll take your word for it, Darth. I'll take your word for it.
Matt Ferrell: I love that this discussion about a water bottle that had AI and a water bottle that made extra hydrogen is still going. And it's been like three weeks.
Sean Ferrell: Yes. It's more conversation than a water bottle with AI deserves.
Matt Ferrell: Yes, 100%.
Sean Ferrell: We also had a bit of a conversation last week about the winter storm that had come through the United States and Matt's need to deal with all that snow and questions about whether or not he was using a product that he had had a number of years earlier, which was a robot snowblower.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: He informed us that he in fact does not still have that robot snowblower because it did not work very well. But some people have jumped into the comments to point out the technology has progressed. Lyle Dahl jumped in to say regarding Matt's robot snowblower, it sounds like he was describing an earlier incarnation of a robot snowblower slash lawnmower recently put to the test by Tom over at the State of Charge YouTube channel. He set the thing loose during the big storm and just let it run continuously. It did pretty good apparently. I guess the tech has improved in the last five years, so no surprises there. Yes, the technology, absolutely. My knee jerk response would be like, yes, absolutely, the technology will have progressed. But I will say this, Matt to you. My expectation is based on what you said about your experience with the storm and the snowblower you do have. You don't feel a mad rush to go buy another robot.
Matt Ferrell: Not at all. There's a reason why that robot's in a farm up in upstate Sean. It's roaming free with all the robots. Yes, I will say it was a first generation model. So it's like it's definitely had improvements and I think somebody else will sent me that. I haven't watched that video yet, but I want to check it out because I do know the company has made multiple iterations, multiple changes based on the customer feedback, which is fantastic. So I'm glad it's working great now, but I still don't feel a desire for it because it's like, I have a great snowblower. It takes me like 30 minutes to go out, just like snowblow the driveway and it could be a foot and a half deep. Do it just fine. Where I'm sure that robot would have to be kind of like he says, going pretty much non stop during the storm to keep up with it. Because those robots cannot do anything over like a foot deep. They just can't. They're just not big and beefy enough. So it's like, is it worth the $3,000 it would take to get that robot? Or just stick with a good quality electric snowblower that can do in 30 minutes.
Sean Ferrell: There's a number of different trade offs here. It's one of those situations where use cases are going to vary widely and everything. From the snarky response of Matt, the exercise is good for you. I mean, it is, it is. But if you were, let's say you were the owner of a commercial site and you had a robot that could wander back and forth in front of your building and make sure that the sidewalk is cleared, and you're like, I'm paying $2,000 for this robot to only clear this sidewalk when storms come in, but I'm avoiding lawsuits. So, like, that use case might make a lot of sense. So it's like, not everything is equal. And that's one of the places where some of the stuff that we talk about, we end up in those little corners where we're like, well, not everything is equal. There's going to be the use case where this product is fine for you and not okay for me.
Matt Ferrell: Not to give a mini review here. But it's like a robot vacuum. They're so good now. It's just like, you take it out of the box, you set it up, program it, let it map itself, and then just set a schedule. And you basically only have to just like, empty the bin every so often. Very minimal maintenance. This robot was requiring so much maintenance. I do zero maintenance on my push snowblower. And this was requiring so much maintenance between seasons, making sure it was clean and clear. And every time I went out to try to use it, Sean, every time, every time it would lose its wifi connection. I'd have to do some kind of Bluetooth reset to get the app connected and then get it all rejiggered. And sometimes it would be like, I forgot the map. You're gonna have to reset up your driveway again. And it was like, it's snowing right now. It's freezing out here. I can't feel my fingertips because I'm using my phone. It's like I wanted to snap my phone in half and just rage at the thing. So it's like the technology still has a ways to go to get that simplicity of. You take out the box, you set it up, and it just works. When I was using it, not even close. It was so aggravating.
Sean Ferrell: Also frustrating to have that much off season time to be spent to maintain it when the entire point of it is supposedly to save you time.
Matt Ferrell: That's my point. It's like it would, if it was working, it would save me time during the snow blowing but then it's like, oh, the oiling this thing and taking this heavy thing off the front of it and making sure the doctoring and the babying that it was taking to make this thing function was just. It was aggravating. It wasn't an enjoyable endeavor. So it's like, that's where I was just like, nope, you're going to the farm. You're not welcome here anymore.
Sean Ferrell: I will admit to being confused about why you dodged out of the way of saying you wanted to rage against the machine. It was right there.
Matt Ferrell: Oh, Sean.
Sean Ferrell: Mysterious soulreaper jumped into the comments to say based on our conversation around the sodium batteries and the safety that is inherent in them because they do not have the same explosive quality as lithium batteries, I for one don't think we should understate how important the safety factor of sodium is. I would much rather put sodium in my home as a battery storage than lithium. Yes, I get that it's ironic because we have too many lithium items in homes already, but they aren't nearly as large. The scaling factor is a big deal. Would you ever install a circuit panel in your house if there was a reasonable expectation it could light on fire, blow up most of the homeowners insurance companies won't insure a home anymore with a battery system. The irony is not lost on me that this important safety message is brought to you by a user whose name is Mysterious soulreaper. I love that it is a good angle to take. It is an important it is like there are a number of different factors in home batteries, not the least of which is when you talk about safety and lithium batteries potentially blowing up. We've seen dramatic videos of cars suddenly spontaneously turning into fireballs and all of that. Let's take that kind of completely out of it. You can't permanently say that a battery in your home will never have a catastrophic accident occur to it. You could have, let's say, a fire in your home where your battery might get damaged. You could have an accident in your garage where a battery, if that's where it is kept, could get damaged. Nothing to do with the quality of the materials, the safety of the battery. If it's completely safely used, things can happen. And so yes, having a battery in your home that is not going to add literal fuel to the fire is preferable.
And so sodium may find that as a perfect use case, while you may end up with different storage solutions in the large scale in other locations. Would that be something you would say you'd expect?
Matt Ferrell: Yes, 100%. And one little note I want to add is I do this too. But like saying lithium catches fire, there are multiple lithium chemistries and some are much safer than others. So, like, what you typically see in a car is nickel, manganese, cobalt. Not so much anymore. They're more and more becoming lithium iron phosphate. But like, what I have in my house for my home storage is lithium iron phosphate, which is far less prone to thermal runaway and the issues of like nickel, manganese, cobalt. So sodium is even safer than that. So yes, there's a reason why safety is a huge issue. And that's why I only wanted lithium iron phosphate for my home energy storage, because I wanted the safest, cheapest battery I could get. And if sodium becomes the safest battery you can get, I'd want that instead. So this is definitely going to be something that's going to be on people's minds as we move forward.
Sean Ferrell: This comment from the Liggle caught my eye because it's kind of a twofer. It touches on two different parts of our conversation last week. One about Ryan Hall y'all and the other about NASA and 3D printing and what it might mean for the trickle down for future technologies. First, the whopper of the weather didn't just hit the east coast though. Here in Texas it was almost all ice. Ryan Hall y'all had a busy week tracking the winter storm. The that was from way west Texas to New York at one point. Yes, we did not mean to imply that it was an east coast only thing. In fact, I think here in the east coast we culturally are okay with this. It lands. We know what to do with it. We have snow tires here in New York City. It became very quickly a well now the snow and ice is gross. It's all piled up in the walkways. And now crossing the street is a little trickier. But it's just part of the normal winter expectation that we have and, and we haven't had to face it for probably a decade now. But when it hit, no big deal. As far as where Matt is, 2ft of snow hitting Boston is just 2ft of snow that hit Boston. That's, that's that we completely understand that in parts of the country it, we were having temperatures in the freezing range all the way down to the tip of Florida. That's not something freezing. It's freezing rain. We had long bitter cold. It's going to affect growth of like agricultural stuff is going to be destroyed. Like, I can't imagine what it's going to do to the fruit Plantations and stuff like that in Florida and across Texas and across all the southern states where it was coming down as freezing rain, taking out power and affecting people in their homes. We hope that everybody's been able to get back to normal. I believe there's still some families that are without power even to this point and spend a couple of weeks now. It's. It's awful.
And I say that as somebody who Matt and I grew up in western New York. We grew up in Rochester, where 2ft of snow would be considered a dusting at certain times of the year. And we lived as late teens, we went through one of the most major ice storms to hit the Rochester area to hit. All of it hit from Ohio, across the state of New York, and there were families without power for six months. It's no joke.
Matt Ferrell: It was devastating. It was devastating.
Sean Ferrell: There's no. Yeah. Thank you for writing in. We didn't mean to imply in any way that like this was just an east coast thing. We understand that it was hitting a lot of other people. And yes, Ryan hall did a fantastic job. I'm another commenter last week said, I didn't expect to hear you guys talking about Ryan Hall y'all. I mean, this guy. I mean the science at work. This is what meteorology is. It is understanding how to interpret scientific data, looking at computer modeling. And he does it with a kind of down country charm. But it's like the science is science. Yeah. And I just love listening to him in the background when he gets that hour long video up on YouTube, YouTube. And he's just like, here's what I think is coming for the week and he lays everything out and he really called all the particulars of that storm in a way that I found really, really remarkable. So shout out to Ryan Hall. The other part of the Legos comment is about the conversation we had around technology advancements that come out of something like NASA developing a new thing so that they can have a doohickey on Mars and they want the doohickey to do hickey. And then 25 years later, people in their homes are using a thing and they don't even realize it was born of the doohickey technology. So we had a brief conversation about that and the legal jumps in on that to say how NASA is looking at the hab printing thing is similar to Formula one tech that eventually ends up in standard vehicles. I was watching a video last night about how they're using additive metal printing to print their pistons and probably more, and was thinking that as they Improve the capabilities and costs go down.
We might see more complicated metal structures printed for all sorts of uses in the way that government subsidizes certain things that can help drive down costs by artificially driving down costs and therefore driving up demand. These places where price doesn't matter. Space, military, sports as much as success matters. Or we see interesting things created for everyone's use. I am likely the only one. But I think a video diving into formula one tech that has ended up in standard vehicles would be cool. It's a really fascinating angle. And thank you so much for pointing out space, military, sport. Sport isn't just about tech. Sport is also science. The things that they can do with reconstructive surgery now are a lot of that is born out of what athletes do to their own bodies. And then doctors go in and try and fix it and they develop new techniques. So the things that we take for granted. Oh, I blew out my ACL and they were able to repair it. And then I'm feeling much better. And now I don't have. I don't have anything, even a limp. I just have a scar on my leg. Is born of the fact that at some point 30 years ago, a doctor had to help a quarterback who got tackled the wrong way and his knee was blown out. So like sports. Yes. Is something I think that Matt and I have kind of had a blind spot for as far as like the kind of tech talk that we do. But it is an interesting angle Matt and I wondered, what do you think about the idea of deeper dives along those lines?
Matt Ferrell: I almost did one that was sports related, Sean. Believe it or not, it was. I went down a rabbit hole around sneaker design and you're. You're bringing up sports. It was the level of engineering and science that goes into some of the most cutting edge sneakers you can get for athletes is mind blowing. It is absolutely mind blowing what goes into these sneakers. The amount of like, data they collect from having sports players playing things, their sensors in these shoes. They can see exactly what's happening to the foot inside of a shoe and redesigning it in a way that will give better support and do different things. I can shave off a half a second off your sprint time. It's like the amount of engineering that goes into these things into golf balls, it's like, it's. It's absolutely wild. And I went down one of the biggest rabbit holes and I had a whole idea of like, I'm going to do this video breaking down these sneakers. And when we looked into like, would anybody want to watch this video? The solution I came up with was, no, I don't think anybody's going to watch this video except for this guy. So I killed the topic.
Sean Ferrell: This guy would watch it.
Matt Ferrell: So yes. So there's two of us that would watch that video. It is something that I'm very passionate about this kind of stuff. The Formula One angle is really interesting. Yeah, I might have to revisit this. Yeah, there's some cool stuff.
Sean Ferrell: I feel like. I mean, there's got to be a kind of mashup that could take place where you could take a look at different things, not just sneakers, but like multiple things. That would be an interesting look. Michael Anderson jumped in to point out some details about battery storage options in Australia. We're always happy to hear from our listeners and viewers in Australia, Michael says. Latest from CATL is Naxtra. Batteries are being put into vehicles now in China as of January 2026. Sodium batteries now being sold in UK and Australia for home energy storage. But is expensive at Australia $854 per kilowatt hour versus Lithium's $500 per kilowatt hour. I recently received a quote for a 17 kilowatt home battery, Australian dollars 14,609. Then the national rebate of some 5200 leaving net out of pocket of 8789. Not a bad rebate considering it's at almost 15,000 and then it's taking off a third roughly. So all in all, it really seems like the Australian angle is let's make this happen from a governmental perspective. So that's nice to see. Interesting to see the numbers. The $850 sodium angle versus the lithium $500 sodium angle. That's really highlighting what you about in your video Matt of yeah, five years ago people would have expected the opposite. They would have said sodium is going to be cheaper. But is this a byproduct of simply they got better at producing the thing. So yeah, the price dropped because they got better at making the thing.
Matt Ferrell: It's also a byproduct of just supply of the materials that go into it, driving costs down. So it's like sodium has an uphill battle, which is why you're seeing it higher because it's so new. I do like the way he broke down the price, showing the difference. Like when I did my house, one of the batteries I was looking at was a battery that was using a chemistry called lithium titanate. And it is, it's like if you want like the gold standard. It's like, that's it. It's like, it is robust. It's incredibly safe. It can take a hammering. It lasts 30 years. Like, this is a lifetime battery. If I got this lithium titanate battery for my garage, it not only would be safe, it would last me the entire time. I'm gonna live in this house. I would never have to worry about ever replacing it. Problem is, it was expensive, it was way more money. So it's one of those. If you're trying to factor in, like, the costs, it's like, here's this extra cost of 854 versus 500. It's like, how long is this battery gonna last you? How long are you gonna be using that battery? All these calculations have to go into, like, is that worth it? It's like, in most cases, no. And that's the challenge right now for sodium is just trying to hit that price point where people will finally pull the trigger and start to buy it.
Sean Ferrell: Scooter Rosie jumped in to drop a suggestion in the suggestion box. Matt. I would like to hear Matt's opinion on the difference between Tesla's new dry coating battery and solid state. Thanks. Any plans to do a video that might take a look at that, or do you have opinions right now?
Matt Ferrell: I have opinions right now. I did a video on this. It's what he's referring to, I believe, is the dry electrode process for making batteries. And that was. I did a video about that, like, four years ago, I think it was. But there's a big difference between the dry battery electrode manufacturing and a solid state battery. Because the way a battery is made, when you're making the anode and cathode, typically it's a wet slurry that is then like coated on a surface. And then they are literally put into drying ovens. And it takes hours for them to dry out. And then once they're dried out, you roll them up and then you inject the liquid electrolyte in there, seal up the canister, you got your battery. The dry electrode process is. It's not a slurry. It's actually just dry powder that is put onto the surface. There's no drying. You can immediately roll it up, put the liquid electrolyte in there, seal the can, you're. You're done. So that's oversimplifying it, but that's the big difference. So it's not a solid state battery. It's just the manufacturing process. And the big gain there is if you have a factory that's 100,000 square feet. Half of that or a third of that might be the drying ovens.
Sean Ferrell: Drying out.
Matt Ferrell: If you don't need the drying ovens, you've just. You don't need as much space, which means you could have more machines making more batteries instead of having 30% battery. Yeah, think about the energy costs of running those ovens are huge. So it's like you're going to save money because you're not going to need as much electricity to dry out the cathode in the anode. So it's like that's the big gain. It's not really, and this is oversimplification, but it's not a gain in how well the battery performs necessarily. It's a gain in how it's manufactured and the speed of manufacturing, the cost of manufacturing. It's good for the manufacturer. It's going to simplify it and make it cheaper. And Tesla's not the only one doing this. There's several other companies that are doing dry electrode manufacturing processes that are all kind of doing something along the same lines as Tesla's doing. It's very cool. I did a video on it a while ago, but it's definitely very different from solid state, which does not have a liquid electrolyte in it. So it's like there's no liquid injected. The anode and the cathode are separated by a ceramic layer or something like that. There's something solid in between the two of them. So there's no. If you puncture it, nothing's going to leak out, nothing's going to catch fire. It's very safe, supposedly long life, depending on which solid state you're talking about. So it's not one to one. And this is a confusion. I see a lot out there.
Sean Ferrell: Finally, the best worst comment from our episode last week from Babarudra. Maybe that Matt could look into a fifth channel about deep science tech. Inconceivable with Matt Ferrell. Just a thought for all that free time you have. Thank you, Babarudra, for that comment. Yes, Matt, how many channels do you want to have?
Matt Ferrell: I'm just one. I think I have too many. But two, All I can hear in my head is the Princess Bride. Inconceivable.
Sean Ferrell: Inconceivable. Yeah. On now to our conversation about Matt's most recent. This was dropped just a day ago. Are heat pumps a scam? Right off the bat, we end up with Arnold Reiter jumping in with a comment, talking about. No, they're not. First let me say I live in Montana and I understand cold winter days. Several years ago, I took my two car garage workshop off grid with solar and batteries. Three years ago, I installed a mini split to replace the window ac. It cut my power use dramatically. That winter I started using it also to heat my garage as pellets for the stove were getting more expensive. Two years ago, I installed a mini split in the living room to cut down the high cost of cooling with my central ac. Again, I saw my electric bill go down dramatically. So as the weather cooled, I used it to heat my 2,000 square foot home. Two weeks ago, my gas furnace self destructed during the night and I had to rely completely on stopgap space heaters and the mini split. After three days, I knew the mini alone would keep the house at 68 degrees with temps down to 28 degrees at night. Those are both Fahrenheit. Both mini splits cost me about $800 each and I installed them myself. My replacement gas furnace cost was $4200 and I was told that was a bargain. My plan now is to add more solar panels and batteries and use the mini splits every chance I have. Being able to provide my own power turned a potential disaster into a minor inconvenience. A really great story, personal anecdote showing how one of the things that stood out to me about this was how it's an incremental analysis. It's not I built my home and I did this from day one. Or I built my home and lived in there for 10 years and then I changed everything over to this other thing. It's literally the drip, drip, drip of oh, I put that in my garage and I'm seeing benefits.
So I'm going to put it in my living room and I'm seeing benefits. And then to have the unexpected winter storm when the furnace fails and really sorry that that happened. That sounds terrible.
Matt Ferrell: Bad.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. This is, I think, a really neat example of it works and you end up with the direct benefit of you got the panel on the roof, storage in the battery feeding into the heat pump, you're fine.
Matt Ferrell: Yep. Yeah. I love that it's the slow electrification of his home. It's like.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: And quite honestly, it's like this is a similar story that I hear a lot of people that start out gradually and it ends up like a slippery slope because once you start to discover, oh, this kind of works and I've got solar, which means I'm generating the power that this thing uses, which means I'm going to save money over here and it's like you start to see all the Lego pieces start to make sense. It's like I see numbers, you're seeing the formulas and everything kind of fill out in front of you. It's like this is a very similar story that I hear from other people as well. It's really, really cool.
Sean Ferrell: Thank you, Arnold, for the comment. There was this from B. Uppy who came in to say, when our state decided to partially fund mini splits, I noticed the price at Costco went up accordingly. So the customer's out of pocket expense was the same. Think legislators may have invested in that, then may have invested in and then demanded prices to rise to line their pockets. The coincidence was angering it. Whether there was conspiracy, market manipulation or anything like that, like let's take all of that out of the equation. This could simply be a company seeing an opportunity to line their own pockets. Yeah. They jack up the price knowing that customers were willing to pay, let's say it's $1,000 just to make the numbers easy. And they, the company reads about a $500 rebate that the government will give. So they add on a $500. They're now increasing their profits by 50%. They know customers were already buying it, but with the rebate it's going to gain more attention. So it's free marketing. That's just gross.
Matt Ferrell: It is.
Sean Ferrell: So other than buying directly from government, which let's all, you know, like, I understand what I'm saying here.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: Other than buying directly from government, how do we get a rebate system where companies don't do this kind of slimy, underhanded deal of profiteering?
Matt Ferrell: Sean, that's a hard, that's the hard question, man. It's like you could, you could potentially have regulations that require, you know, meeting not, I don't want to say price fixing because that's going to be awful. But like, you know what the going rate of a thing is. And if the regulators were keeping track of that, they could see which stores and marketers are jacking prices up beyond that in an unreasonable way and kind of slap their hands. That's really the only way you could do this is just kind to keep tabs on the marketplace to make sure there's not kind of price fixing in a bad way happening.
Sean Ferrell: Well, it's been, it's been gutted recently. But I would say the consumer protection bureau would be like if it had teeth. If you out there are writing to your representatives and advocating for a consumer protection bureau that actually has teeth and the ability to come down on companies that do this kind of thing, that would be one solution. But I'm sorry that that experience occurred because think about all the people who did not take advantage of the rebate option.
Matt Ferrell: Yep.
Sean Ferrell: Simply because they saw prices that now were higher than they had been previously, and they're like, well, now it's not worth it. That's infuriating. Tim had an experience which is kind of the flip side from, like, oh, here's a rebate option, but, oh, somebody's manipulating and price gouging, so I'm not gonna do it. Tim's experience. Just about a year ago, I called up my power company to try and see if I could get help to figure out why my electricity bill was so high. And wouldn't you know it, they were not much help. I think the guy knew less than I did about any of this. One thing he actually said is heat pumps lose all efficiency when the outdoor temperatures drop below freezing. They are no better than my standard resistive heater. At that point, I thought to myself, that can't be right. Anyway, I quickly thought it through and responded that he was flat wrong and he really should go back to school to learn about how things work. So it felt good to say. It still didn't help me figure out my large bill at the time.
Matt Ferrell: You go, Tim.
Sean Ferrell: This is. Yes, you go, Tim. I also think this is probably a byproduct more than anything of companies, and I include, like, municipalities, electric companies, like, outsourcing their customer service. Things like this are problematic when the people on the phone are not well versed in the information. I would be willing to bet that this was a call center that has a script, and the script is probably not well written or informative, and so the people are winging it. So when you say, I have a feeling he knew less than I do, I would bet money that you were right. I would bet money that the person you were talking to had no idea what they were saying.
Matt Ferrell: Well, clearly so. But that's why I made this video.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, that's why you made this video. And this kind of thing gets worse, Matt. I mean, this, for me is one of the frustrations as companies move more and more to AI for customer service.
Matt Ferrell: Oh, boy.
Sean Ferrell: AI is a rung below bad human customer service. Other than everybody watching your video to understand what's actually happening with heat pumps, how do people deal with this kind of headache? When a company like, the simple thing is, like, the electric bill may have gone up because fuel costs went up, and therefore it was passed on to the customers because electricity was more expensive for your electricity city provider to give to you. But they should be able to say that. They should be able to give you.
Matt Ferrell: An explanation or help your customer understand what they can do in their home to discover where their energy use is going. I mean, just don't blame a heat pump. It's like, well, we can't tell you offhand what's causing this, but if you, there's these meters you can get at Home Depot for 15 bucks and you can go track your major appliances and see how much energy they're actually using, you might be able to track down the big energy users of your home to figure out what, what's causing it. It's like you could give them guidance on how to figure it out, but to immediately just go, heat pumps lose all efficiency in the cold. It's like, no, no, dude, that's. That's not helpful. Two. It's. It's wrong. Um, yeah, it's frustrating. There's a video that's gonna be coming out soon where I'm comparing my house's heat pump setup, which is geothermal, to a friend of mine who lives in Connecticut who has an air source heat pump system. And we did a very apples to apples as best we could between our two houses, like what our experiences were, how much it cost to run, all that kind of stuff. And Paul, who's the other gentleman in the video, he had a bonkers experience talking about people not knowing what they're talking about. He tried to get an installer, a quote for how much money it would cost for him to install a couple heat pumps in his house. And he had the guy in the living room describing to him what he wanted. And the installer basically just went, I don't know how to. No, I don't. I can't. Nope. And just left. He, he at least admitted, I don't know enough about heat pumps and what you're asking for, so I can't do this. I'm not your installer. And walked out the door. But Paul standing in his living room.
Sean Ferrell: Good on that guy to admit he had a limit.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: Like, yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: So it's like, at least he didn't go, I don't know what I'm doing, but yeah, sure, I just want to get the sale.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: It's like he didn't just push through with his ignorance. At least he just was like, I, I don't know, I can't. I'm not the right installer for you.
Sean Ferrell: I did not pull a comment from the comments on your video. It was very long from a guy who said, I used to do installation of HVAC. And his comment was very interesting, but I felt it was a little too off topic. But based on what you just said, I encourage viewers and listeners to go find the comment. He talks about the current trend in the building industry toward basically lack of knowledge within the various spheres of carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, HVAC, gaps in knowledge of the people doing that work. And he rests a lot of it in gaps in knowledge of what the consumers know. People don't know any longer what goes into building a home. Therefore, they do not know how to talk to people about what is going into the building of a home. So it's done substandard, people cut corners and people are not well trained. And he talks about after 40 years in the industry, it breaks his heart to see the quality of what gets made now and how it gets passed on. And it feels like that is the what the commenter was complaining about is the same thing. But the flip side of what you just described. There's a contractor who's willing to say, I have my limits and I can't do that. So good on that guy for not just taking the bucks and then walking away. So wow. But a weird experience that must have been like kind of a Looney Tunes moment of like a bunch of spinning bobby pins and a little cloud of dust and you're like, what happened? Where did they go?
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Bounce jumped into the comments to say it amuses me to see the heat pump discussion and the scam part of it. These things have been in use in Europe for ages, at least in the northern parts where people actually have serious winters. These things are great. The only ones that do not work during the cold are the ones not designed to work during the cold. Usually the cheaper ones, they get sold to you with a huge smile and a lot of empty promises. So yeah, that's one part of the conversation that we didn't have yet, which is these are not new people.
Sean Ferrell: In the US For a long time.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, it's like, Sean, I don't know if you remember this, but when we were living where we lived when we were teenagers, I remember there was a time where something had to be done with the furnace. And I remember dad explicitly saying this when it came up with somebody that they knew in the church had a heat pump and it didn't work in the cold. I remember dad saying that vividly. And so every time I'm working on these videos. Sean, I hear Dad's voice saying they don't work in the cold because at the time that actually was true. It's like the heat pump systems then were using different refrigerants and they weren't good below, you know, barely below freezing. But the problem is that mindset of they don't work in the cold. Fast forward 35 years, things have changed, but yet that still persists. And that's kind of like what I'm pushing back on with these videos. But balance, you're 100% right. They're far more prevalent in Europe than they are here, but they are still here. But the problem is that misinformation from like 30 years ago just won't die, won't go away.
Sean Ferrell: Finally, the best worst comment for Matt's most recent well, we have a tie. We have this one from Tracy Reed who said, wow, an undecided video about a technology, that it is actually commercially available right now. This is a very special occasion. The snark is enjoyed Tracy. Matt and I were just recently talking about the fact that people will say how come Matt doesn't talk about things that are actually available? And Matt's comment back to me was he talks about things like that all the time. They exist. These things are real. So Tracy, I hope that was tongue in cheek. But even if it wasn't, I enjoyed it. And then there was this from CT Hellis who wrote about this conversation being about heat pumps and whether they're a scam. Looks for technology connections in the comments. Knife in teeth. Yes, the big Undecided Technology Connections. The showdown people are clamoring for where Matt goes toe to toe against ALEC to see who is right. Listeners, jump into the comments. What did you think about this conversation? Is there something we missed? Is there something you wish we had said instead? Let us know. We appreciate the comments. They do drive the content of this program. We also appreciate your support in that way because it helps shape Undecided. As we talked about, there are a couple things that came up in this conversation that might lead Matt to making a video or two about some other topics that had not been considered. As always, your comments, your likes, subscribes, and your sharing with your friends are all greatly appreciated. Those are easy ways for you to support the podcast. If you'd like to support us more directly, you can click the join button on YouTube or go to stilltbd.fm, click the become a Supporter button there. Both those ways allow you to throw coins at our heads.
We appreciate the welts and then we get down to the heavy business of talking about heat pumps or sodium batteries or… … … Thank you, everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen, and we'll talk to you next time.